


Cooking Fast & Fresh With Cas

by Duck_Life



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Castiel, Gen, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 17:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas wants to make dinner for Dean and asks Sam for help. Written for a friend's birthday. Oneshot. Please R&R!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cooking Fast & Fresh With Cas

“Sam?” says Cas, and even though he’s not an angel anymore he still manages to sneak up on the boys occasionally. Sam jumps.

“Yeah, what’s up?” he asks, turning away from the bookshelf in the library. Still in his trench coat, Castiel looks tired and small, but determined as he squints up at Sam.

“I want to make dinner for Dean tonight.”

Half an hour later Sam’s wondering why he agreed to it as Castiel painstakingly inspects the shopping carts at the grocery store for the one with the least squeaky wheels. “You know, we had food back home,” Sam tells him when Cas finally selects a cart.

“Not the food I need.”

“And… and what do you need?” he asks, tagging along warily as Cas rattles the cart over the threshold of the shop.

“I’m not sure,” Cas says, turning back to him, eyes suddenly apprehensive as his hands slip on the handle of the shopping cart. “I thought I’d just know when I see it.” Edging the cart and the fallen angel out of the way of other customers, Sam cranes his neck around to look at him.

“Have you… done this before?”

“Once.” Surveying the array of fruits and vegetables to his left, Cas juts forward and runs a thumb over a laminated price tag. “Does Dean like lemons?”

Sam shrugs. “I guess-” and abruptly Cas loads five of them into a plastic bag and tosses it into the cart. “Okay, but did you have a _meal_ planned?”

“Of course,” says Cas, setting a bunch of bananas and a bag of cilantro beside each other in the cart. “We need a rack of lamb.”

Staring at him, Sam tries to sound encouraging and suggests, “How about steak?”

“Do you think Dean would like that better?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, guiding the cart out of the way of customers again. “Come on.” After that, he takes control of the cart to keep Castiel from careening it into shelves and marches up towards the butcher’s, throwing a glance or two over his shoulder to be sure he hasn’t lost Cas. When they get to the counter and Sam starts checking prices, Cas pops up and announces that he’s going to run around the store and grab some other things before meeting Sam back here, and before Sam can argue he’s running away, tattered trench coat fluttering behind him.

“Excited?” the butcher asks, cocking an eyebrow.

Half-grimacing and half-smiling, Sam nods. “He doesn’t get out much,” he acknowledges before looking down at the display of raw meat.

“Wings are on sale.”

“Oh no,” Sam tells him, a little too quickly. “Just… bad associations. No. No thank you. No wings.” After Sam’s purchased four steaks, Castiel bounds back into view arms laden with food. “Oh, really Cas? Donuts?”

“For tomorrow,” he says, dumping them in the cart on top of the steaks as Sam pushes forward. In addition, he drops a pile of Tic Tac boxes on top of the cilantro. “Also, as I’m not yet proficient at brushing my teeth I thought it wise to find another way of maintaining fresh breath.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Sam, turning down an aisle. “So, steak. What do we need for sides?”

But Cas doesn’t seem to be paying attention to him, he’s busy staring at a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese. “Who’s that?”

“What?” Leaning around Cas’s mussed hair, Sam inspects the cartoon pictures on the cardboard box. “It’s Spongebob.”

“Who?”

“Spongebob Squarepants,” Sam shrugs. “He’s… like a talking sponge thing. Kids watch him.”

“Is he a pasta salesman?” At this point, Sam just shakes his head and moves on. After a moment of hesitation, Cas tosses the box of Spongebob mac and cheese in the shopping cart and follows him. Rounding the next aisle, Cas straightens up, on alert when he notices the rows of chips. “We should get Pringles.”

“…Why?” Sam’s beginning to regret agreeing to this trip almost more than anything else in his life, setting Lucifer free not excluded. At least Satan hadn’t thrown ten packs of string cheese into the shopping cart because “it looks sophisticated”.

“Just look how the containers are crafted,” Cas declares, pulling out a can of the crisps. “Aerodynamic and perfectly sealed, without wasting any space. Align with each other on the shelf without flaw. And the Pringles themselves are amazing, the curvatures lining up with each other and fitting together.” His eyes glow the way Dean’s do when he talks about pie or Zeppelin’s fourth album. “It’s an architectural feat of humankind.”

“You can have _one_ ,” Sam says, amending when Cas completely ignores him to, “or four.”

At home, Sam tries to sort out which of the groceries belong in the cabinet and which could actually contribute to tonight’s meal, but Cas pushes his arm away. “Leave it alone,” he insists stubbornly, refusing any help Sam tries to give him. “I was there when you all first discovered how to grind wheat to make bread, I know how to prepare a simple meal.” Turning around, he adds, “Now, where’s the fire pit?”

While Sam stalks off to fiddle on his laptop and probably take an ibuprofen or twelve, Cas lays out his ingredients and begins to think. He’d been sure to buy a pie crust and filling, as well as broccoli and cheese and pickles and, of course, the steaks, which Sam ends up throwing out after storming back into the kitchen an hour later to find a hell of a lot of smoke, four steaks piled on top of each other in a frying pan over searing stove flames, and a very embarrassed Castiel.

The pie is also a flop, meaning it literally flops over in the oven due to the angle Cas perched it at- “The directions say to cook it at 350 degrees, Sam!”- and results in nothing more than a gooey mess.

“Well,” says Cas once the smoke clears, “I think we’ve successfully proven that I can’t do anything right.”

“No,” Sam tries, weakly. “Well, yeah. But it’s okay, Cas. I mean, no one ever made a movie about the Good News Bears.” The reference flies right over his scorched eyebrows and does nothing to make him feel better, so Sam pats him on the shoulder and begins cleaning up the wreck of the kitchen.

They end up purchasing a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and a pie from the bakery. Dean never knows the difference.

 


End file.
